


night by lonesome night

by Curlscat



Category: The Sisters Grimm - Michael Buckley
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 15:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28620495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curlscat/pseuds/Curlscat
Summary: Sabrina and Red are both chronic insomniacs. It makes sense that they'd fall into step with each other. And from there, fall into feelings.//Conversations between two oft-overlooked girls, late at night. Shared cocoas and shared secrets.
Relationships: sabrina grimm/little red riding hood
Comments: 11
Kudos: 9





	night by lonesome night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Puckabrinaluver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puckabrinaluver/gifts).



> the RAREST of rarepairs! (don't worry i still ship puckabrina. what? i'm a complex being. i have layers. i can multiship.)
> 
> I'd say through the course of this fic Sabrina is probably 17 or so and Red looks 15. For my purposes Red and Daphne are not aging at the same pace. Also for my purposes they all live in FPL except Puck and Jake.

“I miss color the most,” Red confesses.

It’s after midnight, and she and Sabrina are the only two awake. It happens like this, most of the time. They’re a pair of insomniacs, the two of them. Nightmares. When they can get to sleep, that is. Sometimes they just… can’t.

One or the other of them will go padding down the stairs after either giving up on sleep or after starting awake, sweating and with their hearts pounding. She’ll make her way down the stairs in the dark, put the kettle on, and wait. Before it starts whistling, most nights, the other girl will join.

Some nights they talk. Not every night. Talking can be hard. So can listening. Often, it’s enough to sit in silence, and to know someone else is suffering, too. Tonight, apparently, is not one of those nights.

“You can’t see color anymore?” Sabrina asks.

“Some colors,” Red says. “Everything’s yellows and blues.” She gives a sardonic little laugh. “I can’t even see my own _name_.”

“Shit,” Sabrina says. She’d like to be more eloquent, but she’s never been particularly good at saying the right thing.

“Yeah,” Red agrees. “And Papa doesn’t— he understands, most of the time, what I’m feeling, but he doesn’t _remember_ colors, not really.”

Sabrina doesn’t have a good answer for that, so she doesn’t say anything, just takes a long drag of her cocoa.

“He still can’t see them,” Red says. “Colors. So even if I got rid of the wolf—”

“Do you want to?” Sabrina asks. “Get rid of it?”

“Sometimes,” Red says.

“I’d’ve thought you’d want it gone all the time,” Sabrina says.

“Why?” Red says. “It can’t be killed. As long as I have it, I can keep it from hurting anyone else.”

Sabrina thinks about her own history of doing the hard thing, of being the monster, so someone else didn’t have to. “Yeah,” she agrees.

Again, they drink their cocoa in silence. It’s heavy, but comfortable.

* * *

Another night. Today Sabrina is drinking coffee. She won’t be going back to sleep, not after that nightmare. Red hasn’t joined her yet, so Sabrina is alone in the kitchen, no company but the house and its small noises. Wind juddering the windows, rain splatting against the walls and the roof. The creaks of settling floorboards. Her own thoughts, loud and racing.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

Ah, there’s Red. Sabrina looks up from her cup of coffee to give Red a wan smile. “Not really,” she says. “The kettle’s still hot.”

Red goes to pour herself a cup of water, gives a suspicious look at the jar of instant coffee on the counter, and squints at Sabrina. She shuffles back to the table. 

Sabrina tosses her a teabag. “Chamomile,” she says when Red sniffs it. “One of us should get some sleep tonight.”

Red looks at the little mesh lump for a bit, then takes a long glance at the dark circles under Sabrina’s eyes. She gets up again and goes for the instant coffee herself.

“You don’t even like coffee,” Sabrina protests weakly.

“Neither do you,” Red says.

Fair enough.

Sabrina settles a little to the sound of Red’s slippers moving along the kitchen floor. Red puts an ungodly amount of sugar and milk into her coffee, microwaves it for a little while to offset the milk’s temperature, and makes her way back to the table. It’s a familiar sound. Nothing like the ripping flesh sounds that haunted tonight’s dreams.

“We could watch a movie,” Red suggests. “Or play spit.”

Sabrina shakes her head to both.

“Mario Kart?” Red suggests.

Sabrina shakes her head again. “Let’s just sit here, okay?”

“Sure,” Red says. She takes a sip of her coffee and makes a face.

Sabrina chuckles a little, fondly. She feels more settled into her skin now. More like a human, less like a collection of lit nerve endings. “Here,” she says, standing. She reaches a hand out for Red’s mug, holding her own in the other. “I’ll make us some cocoa.”

Red hands over the mug with more relief than she probably meant to let show on her face.

Now it’s Sabrina’s turn to bustle around the kitchen, turning the kettle back on and rinsing mugs and pulling cocoa out of the cabinets and pouring milk into the mugs to offset the wateryness of the brand of cocoa Granny buys and the whole time feeling the floor under her bare feet, a little too cold but textured and firm and steady and grounding.

“Did Puck get hurt again?” Red asks, once Sabrina’s finally settled down again. “You’ve been better about the bad nights, recently."

“You’ll never see the scars,” Sabrina says, because Red got it on the first go. “I’m the only one who’s upset.”

“Yeah,” Red says.

“It’d be easier if I heard from him literally any other time,” Sabrina says, because she said she didn’t want to talk about it, but now that she’s started she doesn’t want anything _but_ to vent to someone, because whatever she and Puck had, it seems like she’s the only one who wants it anymore, and even still sometimes she’s not sure if she wants it at all or if she just wants _someone_. “But no it’s all ‘I’m off to see the world, you’ll wait at home for me, right? You never wanted adventures anyway!’ Of course I didn’t want adventures! I was twelve! I wanted to feel safe, for once in my life!”

“Do you still want that?” Red asks. “Safety?” There’s something heavy in her tone, something Sabrina doesn’t quite understand.

“I dunno,” Sabrina says, thinking about it. “I mean, yes, of course, but maybe not just safety? And I don’t want safety if it means getting left behind while everyone _else_ is in danger. Does that make sense?”

Red nods. She sips her tea.

“I wish I could just _get over_ him,” Sabrina groans, burying her head in her hands, fingers digging into her hair. “We were never even friends. But my stupid heart wants what it wants.”

“Yeah,” Red says, and it’s heavy, again. Sabrina wishes she understood.

* * *

Red and Daphne have had a fight, so Sabrina doesn’t even bother going to bed. She has no idea what the fight was about. She wasn’t home for it, because she and Puck went off by themselves to have a long-overdue talk about feelings and what they both want out of life. It turns out, at the moment, what they want is Not Each Other. And she’s not as upset about that as she’d thought. They’re going to try being friends. See if that works. And if it doesn’t, well then? You can’t build a relationship with someone you don’t enjoy spending time with. They’ll see.

She’s not really upset. She thought she would be, but she’s already spent years mourning the death of something they never had. It’s nice to know it’s actually gone.

When they came back, it was obvious that the girls had gotten into it. Daphne was being pointedly chatterboxy, talking to everyone but Red, including Pinocchio. Since Daphne and Pinocchio get along about as well as, well, Sabrina and Puck, that’s always a bad sign. And Red’s eyes were blue. She wasn’t being noisy about it, and she actually looked kind of sad, but her eyes were furious, furious blue.

So Sabrina doesn’t go to bed. She settles in the living room with a book and a pitcher of iced tea, lets the box fan in the window lull her into complacency as the room grows dark around her.

Red appears promptly at eleven, which is when you can be sure everyone else is asleep. Sabrina knows from experience, from her own nights waiting for a little space to mope in peace.

“In here,” Sabrina says without looking up from her book. She waggles the second cup she’d brought into the living room.

Bare feet scuff across the wood, then _shff_ through the plush rug. The couch squeals and shakes as Red sits down on the other side, the kind of heavy plonk that someone as slight as Red can only achieve with intent. There’s some sniffling sounds, and Red’s breath is coming out in hiccup-y heaves.

Sabrina finishes her chapter to give Red time to compose herself.

“What are you reading?” Red asks when Sabrina’s almost done.

“Carmilla,” Sabrina says. “Do you think she’s real?”

“I’ve never read it,” Red says. “What’s it about?”

“Lesbian vampires,” Sabrina says. “It got a youtube series that’s like a modernization or something? My English teacher last year was really into ‘translations of classic works for modern audiences.” She makes her voice mocking, even though she’d been interested, too. Obviously. Otherwise she wouldn’t be reading one of the books listed in the packet.

“Cool,” Red says. “I don’t think vampires are real? But I’d have to check.” She sounds apologetic. “I wasn’t really paying attention ‘til a few years ago.”

“Yeah,” Sabrina says easily. “It’s not that important. I think I’m aware enough that if I start dreaming about a lady coming to chew on my boobs I’ll be able to sound the alarm.”

Red lets out a snort of a laugh, and Sabrina grins to herself. Point, Sabrina.

“Can I vent to you about Daphne?” Red asks after a moment. “Or would you rather I didn’t?”

“There is nothing bad about her that you could say that would surprise me,” Sabrina says drily.

“Are you sure?” Red asks, and there’s a darkness in there that Sabrina recognizes, because she’s felt it, too, when she looks at the way Snow treats Charming. Because she loves Snow, she does. Snow’s wonderful. But she’s not wonderful to Charming, and Charming just lets her hurt him, like he thinks he deserves it.

Ah.

Okay, so Sabrina has some self esteem issues, particularly where it comes to her perfect little sister. Daphne who’s good at magic and good at people and not traumatized and is everything Granny ever wanted in a grandchild and Veronica wanted in a daughter and even when she butts heads with Henry she’s still always so certain she’s got the moral high ground, and Sabrina knows, she _knows_ that Daphne isn’t better than she is. She knows that if it hadn’t been for her, Daphne would be just as messed up as Sabrina is. But still.

“Tell me you weren’t fighting about me,” Sabrina says, tired and a little miserable.

“She’s so _mean_ to you,” Red says, sounding twice as miserable as Sabrina feels, wobbly like she’s gonna start crying again.

Sabrina sighs and raises an arm. “C’mere,” she says.

Red burrows against Sabrina’s side like she was waiting for the invitation. Her arms wrap tight around Sabrina’s middle. They feel right, there. Comfortable. Sabrina settles her own arms around Red’s shoulders, and that feels comfortable too.

“Why do you let her get away with it?” Red asks. “I get it with the grown-ups. They’re adults, and they mean well. But Daphne… she’s my best friend, and I love her a lot, but she isn’t trying to—she doesn’t just want you to grow up to be a different shape of person. She just— she’s just _mean_. And only to you.”

There’s a lot Sabrina could say to try to explain this to Red. A lot about wanting Daphne to be safe, about needing to be loved by someone, even if that love is broken. About the person Sabrina was before her parents disappeared, and how hard it must have been for Daphne to watch that little girl die, and to see someone furious and always scared walking around wearing her face. About how many times Sabrina took the blame for Daphne because someone had to stay happy. Something had to stay good. And it wouldn’t be Sabrina, would never be Sabrina, was too late for that.

What she says, instead, though, is, “It’s easier, I guess. To let her feel her feelings at me without trying to get her to understand that sometimes people think differently to each other.”

“I hate it,” Red says. “I hate that Granny’s harder on you than everyone, and that your dad treats you like you’re fragile, and your mom is always disappointed in you for doing your best, and that Daphne can’t understand that she’s not helping, she’s making it _worse_!”

And now _Sabrina_ wants to cry. Because, for once, she feels _seen_. And loved anyway. And that’s way too rare, that people look at her, really look at her, and like what they see. Want to stand up for it.

“You—” Sabrina swallows, clears her throat. “You don’t have to be my champion.”

“Someone should,” Red grumbles.

“Yeah, well,” Sabrina says. She had something else she wanted to say after, but she can’t fit it out around the lump in her throat.

They hold each other for a long time.

* * *

Daphne and Red don’t talk for over a week. Sabrina watches with interest. She’s never held out this long against the silent treatment, and it’s fascinating to see someone who’s not only as stubborn and Daphne, but as self-righteous about it. Red’s such a strong person, it’s kind of amazing. She isn’t loud about it, but she’s so, so good. Sabrina’s a little in awe.

The two girls might never have spoken again except that Sabrina manages to wake Daphne with one of her nightmares. Daphne’s usually a pretty damn heavy sleeper, so Sabrina isn’t careful about being quiet anymore. So she screams herself awake without much thought to anything but her own racing heartbeat, and makes her shaky way to the kitchen.

Red joins her there a minute later.

“Was I that loud?” Sabrina asks. She tries to make it a joke, but it doesn’t come off with any kind of levity.

“Yeah,” Red says. She starts making tea.

Sabrina is grateful. She feels too shaky to handle mugs or hot water or anything, really. Too scared. Too certain she’s going to drop something, and get locked away again in the dark by herself.

But she won’t, because that was years ago, now. She never has to go back there, never has to be that tiny scared girl again. She’s older. She knows how to protect herself, and she knows people that she can turn to. She is not alone. See? Red’s here right now, handing her a cup of something hot.

“It was about the orphanage,” she tells Red. “I was alone in the dark, and it was just—I haven’t dreamed about that in forever. I don’t know why it’s coming up now.”

“Cindy would say it’s that you feel safe,” Red answers. “Trauma comes back when you’re finally able to deal with it.”

Sabrina snorts. “Tell that to all the nightmares I’ve been having for the past seven years.”

Red shrugs. “I dunno. I’m not the counselor.”

“How’s that going?” Sabrina asks. “Counseling, I mean.”

“Good,” Red says, “You should try it.”

“Someday,” Sabrina says, and means it. “But I have to be able to talk about it first.”

“Yeah,” Red agrees. “I still haven’t talked about the whole ‘feeling like I deserve to be miserable’ thing.”

Sabrina grimaces. She raises her mug towards Red, her hand only a little shaky. “To thinking we deserve everything we’re getting,” she says.

“Hooray,” Red says, voice dry.

They drink in comfortable silence for a while, and Sabrina begins to find her center. Red always helps her find herself.

“You don’t deserve it,” Red says suddenly. Fiercely, too. “You don’t deserve any of this and screw everyone who thinks you do and made you think so, too.”

“Right back at you,” Sabrina says, though she’s going warm and mushy inside.

“Yeah, well, at least mine aren’t still around to make it worse,” Red mutters.

Sabrina laughs a little, bitterly. “Most of mine are out of my life, Red. There are so many people who screwed me up so much worse than my family.”

“So that make it okay?” Red demands. “Just because they’re not locking you in a basement or starving you or hitting you, it’s fine that they’re hurting you?”

Sabrina shrugs. “I mean. It kinda has to be.”

“No it doesn’t.”

Sabrina lets out a blustery sigh. “What do you want me to do, Red? If Daphne won’t listen to you, she won’t listen to anybody. Except Granny, maybe, but I’ve never been good enough for her, either. No matter how hard I try.”

“I don’t know,” Red mutters. “I just—I can’t sit back and watch it anymore. It feels like I’m condoning it or something. You deserve better.”

“Do I?” Sabrina says. “I’m not a great person, Red.”

“Neither am I!” Red says. “I’ve killed people, Sabrina. Actually killed them. Literally caused them to get eaten. And before you say that that was when I was sick—so what? You’ve been trying to be better every single day I’ve known you. And it’s never good enough for them! Someone needs to cut you some slack and understand that you’re trying! And I know Puck got it, sort of—’

Sabrina’s breath catches in her throat.

“But he didn’t cut you any slack, either! He just figured out how to help you be the kind of better you were trying to be! And that’s not what you need! I know it’s not! I’ve been watching!”

“I don’t want you to lose your best friend over me,” Sabrina says. She’s not worth it.

“Tough,” Red mutters.

Neither of them notice Daphne standing in the doorway. Not until she runs away, sobbing.

* * *

Red and Daphne sort it out. Daphne starts trying to be nicer to Sabrina. It’s slow going, but progress is made. It’s nice, to feel cared about.

Sabrina tries to pay attention to Red back, because she knows Red has always been good at watching people, looking for what they need, finding quiet ways to give it to them. And sure, they’ve got their cocoa nights (iced tea nights coffee nights chamomile nights), but knowing how someone likes their hot chocolate is different from seeing the ways you can meet their needs in the light of day.

Red’s sweet. And kind. And she tries so hard to make up for her past. She’s got a core of iron in her. She’s wise, in a weird way. She makes brilliant art, even in black and white, or when she can’t see the colors right. Sabrina can help with the colors, at least, can label them clearly. But even when Red gets the colors wrong, it looks cool. Like it was done on purpose.

She also gets overwhelmed when there are too many people around, and has to fight to keep a lid on her temper, always fight the wolf that’s living inside her. She looks at Basil like she’s longing for something she knows she can never have, like she has to hold herself back from being his sister. If she sees bone china something inside her freezes and it takes her a few seconds to come back to herself.

Sabrina notices these things, and keeps noticing. It stops becoming something she does on purpose and becomes something she just does. But it isn’t until she has a nightmare about Red, dead and bleeding, that she puts two and two together.

She’s had nightmares about Red before. But they’ve been the wrong kind of _about_ , the kind that leaves her feeling guilty that she can’t shake her terrible first memories of someone she cares about so much. Not the kind where losing Red is what she’s so afraid of.

And today she doesn’t go to the kitchen, because even though she knows it was just a nightmare, knows Red will be fine, she can’t wait for the other girl to come downstairs, she needs proof right now, needs to know that Red is alive and whole, because she—

She loves her.

And not the way she loves Daphne, or Basil, or her parents or Granny or even Puck. This is not familial love. Nor is it the kind of reluctant passion she and Puck shared, once. No, this is a soft love. A creep-up-on-you kind of love. A love that you can overlook for a long, long time.

Red meets her at the door. “Hi,” she says, surprised. And why shouldn’t she be? This is a break from their tradition of meeting each other downstairs.

Sabrina looks at her, whole and healthy and beautiful, and breaks down crying. Right there on the floor outside Red’s room, she collapses to her knees. Red crouches with her, making shh-ing noises and rubbing Sabrina’s back.

“I’ve gotta tell you something,” Sabrina says, once she’s in control of herself again. Why not? She’s already changed things. What’s a little more? A little bravery, just this once? “And if you don’t want—it’s fine. I just—”

“Sabrina,” Red says, and she’s smiling, a little, tentatively. Glad to see she’s all right, or getting there. “What?”

“I just—my nightmare,” Sabrina starts again. “It was—you were—and I just—” She stops, breathes. “Red. I. I need you to be alive. For, like, ever. Because I—”

“Sabrina,” Red says again, and her tone is different, this time. Cautious, hopeful, shocked. “Sabrina. Do you—”

“I think I went and fell in love with you,” Sabrina says with a little unhinged laugh.

“Sabrina,” Red says, and this time her voice is transcendent. 

Red kisses her on the forehead. On the nose. Sabrina meets her lips with her own for the next kiss. And so what if they’re moving fast? Tonight barely feels real anyway. Maybe Sabrina will wake up and this will have been a dream too.

They stop kissing, eventually, because the floor is cold and hard and uncomfortable. And they go downstairs, as they always do, for cocoa.

“I’d have loved you from the sidelines forever,” Red tells her, eventually. “Loved you harder for all the people who don’t love you the way you deserve.”

Sabrina knows. Knows that’s how Red loves. Quietly, without expecting anything in return. 

She reaches out, twines their fingers together. “You don’t have to,” she says. “And now I’ll try to love you as much as you deserve.”

And maybe, someday, they’ll believe they do deserve it. Until then, they can believe for each other. It’s worked so far.


End file.
